


Stardust and Mist

by definitionangel



Series: Of Starlight and Clouds [6]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 23:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20380129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitionangel/pseuds/definitionangel
Summary: Doyoung wants answers to everything, and he'll count this outing as successful because at least he got the answers to one thing?





	Stardust and Mist

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! It's my beginning story rant about self care! Go take care of yourself! This story can wait! Or if reading my work is theraputic, go right ahead!  
Anyways, because the semester has started, I'll post every other Sunday, because schoolwork, you know? Also, I live in the pacific time zone, so I am... very behind on everything.  
Without further ado, please enjoy?

When Doyoung opens his eyes from the strangest dream he’s ever had, the sky feels as if it’s been lifted off his shoulders, kind of like he’d learned how to breathe after he was fifty feet underwater. He isn’t quite sure why he feels this way, but it isn’t bad, not at all. On top of that, he doesn’t feel exhausted today.

He doesn’t have to be anywhere today because for once, he has no shift on Saturday, which is nice. The window is frosted over, and there’s snow piling on the ground, singing of winter’s arrival and reminding of frosting spread over the ground as if the entire cityscape was a giant cake.

Inside his room, the vial once containing the black liquid glints warm in the light, a great contrast to the white snow that will cause deaths of frostbite and sickness. The liquid reminds him of something just outside of the reach of his memory, something on the tip of his tongue but never quite reaching the air. Something about that vial containing black reminds him of his mother, the one that passed into the stars long ago. Come home, the vial whispers in his mother’s voice when he listens to the silence, and he attributes it to magic trying to tempt him into throwing his life away into the comforting blackness of the void, the next time Yuta drags him hiking to the highest peaks of the mountain tops.

Sometimes, he considers Taeil to be right about his heritage, that he is not a hundred percent human, but that is something Taeil will never know. Magic never tries to take anyone that is not their own on purpose.

There’s another beat to the city, a gentle humming that Doyoung’s never noticed, something that sings to him when he steps out today, jacket around himself tighter and boots laced completely up to fight the cold away. The snow sings, songs of quietness, of mourning, as car ash blackens it’s purity and turns it into black slush. The sky is cloudless, and that feels more exposing than ever, and the sun’s rays are cold but blinding, feeling as if they would curl around him and kidnap from the softness of the earth’s surface.

Doyoung isn’t too sure why.

Even if it’s the beginning of winter, it feels as if something is awakening from its slumber, shaking itself free from the dreaded life of summer and rapid deaths of fall and intertwining with the air as everything else goes to sleep in the winter.

He doesn’t really have anywhere to be, lets his feet wander, but his feet are traitorous and bring him to the Park of Ghouls and Restless, where Taeyong and his kind of coven reside. Taeyong refers to it as his garden sometimes, when they talk, and his heart starts beating faster out of some sort of maternal love for something missing, but he doesn’t quite know what is missing. Other times, Taeyong refers to it as his growing army, and Doyoung’s heart starts racing in fear of the sun that sits in the sky all day.

Doyoung isn’t sure why, but today, he wants to bring the ghouls and the undead to be cradled like babies, to croon at them and fix all the problems that come with their undeadness. His mother had once said that these are the souls that became so broken that they couldn’t be reincarnated unless they were sent to rest in the sky but the sky had rejected them. She said once upon a time, the sky never rejected anyone.

Of course when he asked her how and why she knew that, she’d simply patted his head, and told him it was a story for another day. He still does not know the story, and will never find out. But perhaps it’s better this way, because ignorance is bliss and those who know nothing of all the bad have it all the best, even if they don’t know it.

Doyoung knows he doesn’t know all the bad, it gnaws at him, something telling him at the back of his mind that he should be able to fix all this, all the horror in the world. He wishes the voice would tell him how. There are so many things to fix, so many things that need changing, the voice would be more helpful if it could tell him how because guilt eats him away when he can do nothing.

The castle thing looms in front of him the next time he wakes up from his thoughts. It looks warm, despite being grey stone and looking like something a shivering traveller would walk up to in the middle of the night to beg for shelter.

Doyoung  _ feels _ like the shivering traveller walking up to the giant medieval castle to beg for shelter, except he isn’t here for shelter, he wants straight answers. Taeyong. All his thoughts go back to Taeyong, and no, it’s not because he’s in love, it’s because Taeyong always shows up at the strange times, to bring him to strange places, with strange nonhumans that he calls a garden or an army.

And maybe it’s just a little bit because his heart bangs his ribcage like they’re trying to break the bone and fly out of his chest into Taeyong’s hands at the thought of Taeyong.

It’s mostly because Taeyong seems like he has all the answers and explanations though so Doyoung doesn’t feel guilty for thinking of something other than physics 24/7. He likes not feeling guilty, because for some reason it weighs at his chest always.

He wants an explanation today, he wants answers, and he will get them even if it takes until the stars fall from the sky and the earth can no longer heal itself.

Hopefully those resting in the stars do not hate him for saying that. 

A breath in, a breath out.

He’s not within the boundaries yet, so none of the inhabitants knows he is outside, shivering from the cold, about to go demand answers from their leader. It’s useful, no one knows what goes on inside, but no one knows what goes on outside their bubble of the world either.

He hears whispers in the wind, and the trees are alight with life, fae life, that he has never noticed before. Something strange stirs in his chest, something like joy bubbling up, elation filling him like rising bread dough.

The magical world is so pretty, beyond what the clairvoyants and clear eyed humans can see. Doyoung knows this now, because the shine of the homes tucked into the tree branches look warm, welcoming but dangerous.

Doyoung knows from Yuta that the fae folk are dangerous, and from his mother knows that nymphs are considered fae folk by some.

“Doyoung, you know you’re always welcome inside the garden,” Sicheng’s airy voice blows across his ear, the winter chill in the aurae’s breath hinting at something left unsaid. It feels kind of intimate, but also like the ghost of something from before. Doyoung pulls his thin jacket tighter around his shoulders, despite the fact that he’s not really cold, he just wants to shield himself from an unknown something.

Sicheng materializes next to him, when Doyoung turns to look, the aurae’s face seems to be crinkled in confusion as he stares at his face. The question laces itself into Doyoung’s mind, because to himself, he hasn’t changed a bit.

“Sicheng? Is there something wrong with my face?” Doyoung’s voice is soft when he asks, because Sicheng looks like he’s just seen a ghost escape from a sunken ship, malevolent and terrifying.

Sicheng doesn’t answer, just grips his hand so the circulation nearly cuts off and drags him forward, into the warmth of the castle. He pays no attention to any of the other inhabitants of the “garden”, tearing straight through the halls and up a spiral staircase that Doyoung has never seen in the five times that he’s been inside this curious place. To be fair, he spends most of his time in the portrait room, trying to figure out why the portrait of Taeyong does not really look like Taeyong.

“TAEYONG!” Sicheng shrieks, voice nearing the decibel of a rocket ship blasting off to the moon. The hand not clutching at Doyoung’s wrist so hard he cannot feel his hand anymore is pounding furiously at the large wooden door, and Doyoung gets the feeling that Sicheng will blow the door down if Taeyong does not open it soon.

Doyoung’s kind of dizzy from climbing up all those stairs, doesn’t really notice much about the door until it isn’t there anymore, and he looks up from his feet to see the world stop spinning and Taeyong standing like he’s trying to block the sunlight from reaching earth. “What do you want, Sicheng?”

The person standing in the doorway is not Taeyong, or at the very least, it isn’t the Taeyong he knows from this lifetime. This Taeyong looks kind of like a cross between the dream Taeyong that he saw when dealing with the scuttlebug voice that tried to seem edgy and threatening but succeeded in neither. Maybe Doyoung is insane. Maybe that’s it.

Insanity from working at that Target would explain everything, but Doyoung has a feeling, it is not insanity he has been dealing with. More like, the gods are bored and need entertainment so they send their least favorite humans to horrible fates kind of thing, but also not really.

Taeyong’s hair is greying, not from the roots like those with old age, but from the ends as if he’d tried to dye it. Parts of it shimmer from black, fading slightly, then shimmer back to black, and it’s pretty. One of his eyes is a marbled mix of red and silver, the other one still a solid comforting red. Taeyong’s skin seems to be gaining a color to it, even if his skin is still mostly grey and pale, but it seems like he has life instead of just being a corpse.

Sicheng nods his head toward Doyoung, and Taeyong jerks back when he sees Doyoung, and Doyoung is just ever the slightly offended. Even if he hadn’t spent any time today looking at himself in the mirror, he’d done it because he thought he’d looked relatively okay. 

“Doyoung,” Taeyong rasps. Sicheng seems to vanish from his side while blowing a bitter chill into the room. A warning, a reminder for something that is only between Sicheng and Taeyong. Jealousy rears its ugly head as bile in Doyoung’s throat, before he forces it back down. There’s nothing between Sicheng and Taeyong, Taeyong has told him this before. When this happened? Doyoung does not know either.

A step, a heartbeat. Taeyong makes Doyoung feel safe, warm, protected, even if he is strange looking and confused and distant. Pressed right into Taeyong’s hand, is Doyoung’s heart, as he crushes their hands together. Taeyong’s hand is warm, almost sweaty feeling, and Doyoung stifles the breath threatening to rise up and make a sound.

“Doyoung,” Taeyong rasps again, reaching to pull something off the cabinet. “Look at your eyes. Look at your skin.”

And Doyoung sees it. In one of his eyes, the one across the marble of Taeyong’s own changing eye, there are sparkles, not unlike the ones glowing in the sky at night, not unlike the map of stars in the portrait room in this castle. Not unlike those at all. In his skin, he sees shimmering, not unlike what’s happening to Taeyong’s skin now, and almost exactly reminiscent of Sicheng’s skin, even if Doyoung’s skin is slightly more something. He does not know the words to describe it, he is not the main character of some romance novel drilling up words to describe their love interest.

It’s slightly ironic because what happens between him and Taeyong are almost too perfect, like it’s written to be snippets of a romance novel. If it is, he likes it. There’s not too much excitement, not really, there could use some more he is sure if there are readers, they are tired of reading what’s going on in his mind.

He doesn’t care. If they read this they will read what is going through his mind all he wants them to.

Taeyong slides a door open, kisses his cheek for no good reason, although Doyoung doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe it’s his imagination that hears Taeyong whisper to him about being brave.

The first thing he sees is the corpse of his mother, eyes closed, serene, and just as if she were sleeping in a bed. There isn’t even any decay to her, just looks how she did when Doyoung was a child having nightmares. Doyoung’s vocal cords nearly break because how long he screams. His mother had to have a closed casket funeral because of how badly the accident that killed her deformed her body.

“Taeyong,” Doyoung swallows, “Don’t the supernatural have laws about disturbing the actual corpses of the actually dead?”

Taeyong swallows, and he gestures to the giant portrait on the wall, the giant portrait on the wall that moves. Neither of their voices seem to work anymore, because Taeyong murmurs, “Your mother never died. She’s the Lady Darkness.”

Lady Darkness rings a bell in Doyoung’s head, but Taeyong turns them around toward the now closed door, on the back of which are six paintings, one on each panel of the door. On the very outside, one of Taeyong, the dream Taeyong with white hair and silver eyes, and one that looks kind of like himself, with the stars flecked into his eyes.

The other four portraits, Jinyoung, Jisoo, Joohyun, and Junmyeon, are all kind of meaningless to him. Of course, they all ring bells, and should all probably mean something to him, but all he can think about are the portraits of him(?) and dream Taeyong.

It’s not so much jarring, but Doyoung thinks this is because he’s seen stranger things happen at Target. This isn’t the worst, so Doyoung will not complain. 

Above the doorway ‘the children of light and darkness’ are written in fancy letters. They shimmer, black and purple and gold and silver and blue, kind of like the night sky and the daytime sun.

“Did you know, all of this started because my father was livid you and I kissed?” Taeyong suddenly says, a hand on Doyoung’s jaw and tilting his face upwards. It’s kind of random, but their noses are close to touching and Doyoung kind of wants to lean down and bite Taeyong’s lips, bite until they are red and puffy because life is returning to him, but at the same time, he wants to watch Taeyong chase him. He should be angry, but he isn’t, not really. There will be time to fight homophobia later and possibly a dictatorship, magical or nonmagical, either works, but right now it’s just them and the magic altering their appearances.

Doyoung smiles slightly, “I have a feeling I should remember that, but because I don't, would you care to make him even madder?”

**Author's Note:**

> So. Did they kiss or not?  
I'm going back to begging for comments because I like attention and I like knowing what people think of these snippets. Also, if I finish posting the plot related snippets, would you like small snippets that are unplot related, published in a different series?  
Please comment.  
Also! My wrists are doing slightly better so I'm going to take advantage of this by replying to all my old comments tomorrow!  
And do not worry, this is hardly the end of this series, but I like being able to plan things out so I know when my other stories can start being published, because I will never publish two plot heavy fics at the same time. Ever.  
With all of this said, enjoy the rest of your day/night!~Lia out!


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